putterings 628 < 629 > 630 index
MR. BISHOP SPEAKS AGAIN.
He Tells What Was His Motive in Writing the Garden of Eden.
Editor Household: — Some of your correspondents seem to take issue with me upon the possibility of there being anything like an Eden in America at the present day. If an Eden is impossible now, pray when will it ever be possible? Is it because we lack wisdom which we shell have a few years hence? Or is it simply because we lack energy?
The world can never be reformed by puttering along the pathway of progress. We have been puttering at the job of the world regeneration for 1,900 years, and as yet it only seems to be fairly commenced. Now let all earnest minded people get at the work in good earnest.
I wonder if any of us realize the full significance of that word, environment? It is environment that makes the tramp, the dead beat, the shiftiess man and the foolish one. Every Christian parent knows how difficult it is to bring up a child where the influences outside of the home are hostile and persistent, and in careless, Godless homes it is far worse. If in some way we could create an Eden environment for all, the next generation would have fewer tramps and drunken men to pray over. An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of reformation.
This is what Wayne Morrison is trying to do in the new Eden. If the
Eden story teaches nothing but the contrast between the present Gomorroh with a jail jn the center, and a possible Eden with the jail left out, it will not have been written in vain. We will not be quite so ready to sit down and plead our utter incompetency to meet the problems which God has placed before us for solution. We will at least feel the prickings of conscience and the impulses for an honest preventive work a little more forcibly.
Let it be remembered that we are to have a brand new century soon, and if we are not to be old fogies it Is time for us to commence to adjust our perceptions and our activities to it. When a woman changes her name and enters into a new life, she gets some new clothes, even if she does not get a new character. It is full time that we were all getting off the rags of indolence, of doubt and of captious criticism,, and setting out in good earnest to get ready for the coming nuptials of the old world with a new era.
The Eden story was not written for beautiful and talented young ladies who are unwilling to learn the lesson of mutual helpfulness. It was written for these who willing learn this lesson, and for the workers of the world, those who, having borne bur-dens thernselves, can realize how divinely noble it is to seek to lighten the
burdens of others.
The mangle and the loom were taken as extreme types for a definite purpose, They teach, rather forcibly, perhaps, the gospel of universal service. The lesson not that all shall do what we falsely call menial labor, but that all shall have a definite work and a definite pursuit in life. There is no room in our fair country for a leisure class, even though they may do a little slumming now and then for convenience’s sake.
The good novel! I sadly admit that I have not written it. But what is the good novel? Suppose the Household readers define it? Still the Oregon lady who writes to the author in haste to know where Eden is, and the name of the man in charge of it, seems to find something real in the story. I trust by this time she has found the real Eden.
Surely the Eden leaven is working in the world. The Eden story is itself the produce of it. Profit sharing in the manufacturing world, and co-operative
housekeeping, are not experiments, although multiple housekeeping may be. Every step toward better conditions in work or in living is a step toward Eden. I have only tried to point out the definite way a little more clearly. And it is my boast that I have not taken my place in the clouds to point out the beauties of a heavenly mirage. From where we stand, we can each turn toward Eden.
Who are willing to be counted among the Eden builders of this eighteenth century? I would be glad of about a million names for future reference. I can promise that they will have something of these to do in the near future if they really want to help.
W. H. Bishop.
—
Toledo [Ohio] Weekly Blade (Thursday, March 21, 1895) : 6
archive.org : link
The same number carries Chapter 23 of W. H. Bishop, his (serialized) novel The Garden of Eden, U.S.A.; A Very Possible Story (C.H. Kerr & Company, Chicago, 1895)
LoC : permalink
the book — all [5]-369 pages of it — does not appear to be available except for a paywalled online version; see Bodleian permalink.
Jess Nevins provides a brief and usefully contextualizing account of Bishop (and his “feminist utopia” The Garden of Eden, U.S.A.) at
“The Victorian Hugos: 1885” (October 19, 2011) : link
William Henry Bishop (1847-1928)
diarist, instructor in French and Spanish at Yale 1893-1903; diplomat (consul in Genoa and Palermo, Italy); artist (painter) critic, novelist...
- William Henry Bishop papers at Yale, MS 83 : link
see abstract and biographical at that finding aid
- wikipedia : link
31 July 2026